Crows Better at Tool Building Than Chimps, Study Says

John Pickrellfor National Geographic News

April 23, 2003

Although there are many industrious tool-users in the natural world, the only animals with enough brainpower to develop and improve the tools they make have long been thought to be humans. Adding innovative new features, such as a wheel or an engine, to previous designs, was one of those traits some scientists believed made us unique.

Now, according to researchers in New Zealand, a crafty species of crow found on the remote Pacific islands of New Caledonia may prove that this trait isn't so uniquely human after all.

As the scientists detail in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, New Caledonian crows (Corvus moneduloides) have been able to add useful new features to the insect-snagging tools they fashion from leathery pieces of torn leaf. What's more, they say, these innovations are faithfully passed on between individuals and across generations.

"The ability to cumulatively improve tools is one of the features that define humanness. In fact this ability has been crucial for our technological progress," said co-author Gavin R. Hunt, at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. "Our findings therefore remove an important technological difference between humans and other animals," he said.

Chimps Trial and Error

Even in the chimpanzee, tool manufacture is often a haphazard process, cites the study, and chimp tools show little evidence of incremental change over time.

Despite the fact that chimps use tools for a wider variety of tasks, such as foraging and grooming, they don't appear to pass on tool-building knowledge in the same way that people, and possibly New Caledonian crows, do.

Chimps don't share precise details about the manufacture of tools, rather they attempt to come to the same end pointa branch stripped of bark and leaves perhapsthrough a trial-and-error process, said Hunt. Design innovations caught upon by individuals are therefore often not transmitted to the next generation, he added.

In contrast, these crows exactly mimic manufacture techniques learned from other birds, and therefore are able to make use of rare innovative new designs.

Researchers have been aware of the surprising cognitive abilities of these crows for some years now. A captive New Caledonian crow, called Betty, was made famous last year when scientists at Oxford University in England, filmed her making hooks from straight pieces of wire to obtain out-of-reach food.

Snip and Tear

In 2000 Hunt, and his University of Auckland co-worker Russell D. Gray, completed a detailed survey of crow tool-making behavior. The pair were searching for evidence that might prove the possibility of incremental change in crow tools.